In 2022, the world experienced major climate-related disasters ranging from flooding and hurricanes to drought and extreme heatwaves. Moreover, 2022 was the sixth-warmest year on record, according to scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.

NOAA just issued its annual report on climate trends in the U.S. for 2022, which includes a review of the major climate-driven weather events that each cost at least $1 billion. NOAA reported 18 separate billion-dollar weather events that collectively cost more than $165 billion — the third-highest tally since 1980 — and resulted in hundreds of deaths.

To learn more about NOAA's findings and the high price of climate-related disasters, in this episode of the ESG Insider podcast we talk with scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI. They are Karin Gleason, NCEI's chief of climate monitoring, and Adam Smith, an applied climatologist at NCEI.

"Much of the world operates on a 20th-century infrastructure and economy, but now we're living in a 21st-century climate. And so the inefficiencies of those two realities are becoming more clear as we move into the future," Adam tells us.

"We have our work cut out for us to better mitigate against future damages that we know will continue," he says.

We'd love to hear from you. To give us feedback on this episode or share ideas for future episodes, please contact hosts Lindsey Hall (lindsey.hall@spglobal.com) and Esther Whieldon (esther.whieldon@spglobal.com).

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How the price tag on US climate-related disasters hit $165 billion in 2022 21:52 Share

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How the price tag on US climate-related disasters hit $165 billion in 2022